Appliances & Audio Devices: These include household products that function as a conventional appliance or device, yet offer advantages through connectivity, such as Sectorqube‘s MAID Oven and Sonos‘ smart home speakers. Sonos is the most well-funded smart home startup in terms of equity financing.

Device Controllers: While most startups produce individual smart home products, these companies produce the devices controlling them. Examples are Peel‘s universal remote and Ivee‘s personal voice assistant, advertised as “Siri for the home.” Both of these companies have received VC funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Foundry Group. Most of these products are able to control smart home products from other companies such as Philips and Nest.

Energy & Utilities: These are companies that utilize sensors, monitoring tech, and data to conserve water and energy. Ecobee and Rachio, for instance, develop products that monitor and control AC and water sprinkler systems respectively, to help make consumption more efficient. Interestingly, several startups in this category have received funding from corporations and corporate venture capital firms, such as Carrier Corporation, which backed Ecobee, and Amazon’s Alexa Fund, which backed Rachio.

Gardening: These companies focus on producing smart products for watering and monitoring household yards, gardens, and plants. This is one of the smaller categories in terms of number of companies. The most well-funded startup in this category is Edyn, which recently raised a $2M Series A round.

General Smart Home Solutions: Instead of producing a single smart gadget, these companies build or distribute multi-device systems that automate several parts of your home, such as ecoVent‘s custom vent/sensor system or Vivint‘s third-party device bundles. Vivint, specifically, has secured $145M in equity funding — second in smart homes only to Sonos.

Health & Wellness: These are products that assist home occupants in maintaining their health and lifestyle, such as MedMinder Systems‘ smart medicine containers and Beddit‘s under-the-bed health sensor. A notable deal in this category is Hello‘s $40M Series A round last year, which made it the most well-funded smart home startup in health & wellness, with over $50M in equity funding.

Home Robots: This category is home to companies that produce robots specifically for maintenance and assistance in a home environment. These include robotic assistant Jibo, whose total equity funding is currently at $52M, and home cleaning robot Neato.

Lighting: Taking cues from products such as the Philips Hue, companies like Sequioa Capital-backed LIFX are coming up with their own app-controlled lightbulbs. Others such as Switchmate are going beyond the bulb and building app-controllable light switches.

Pet/Baby Monitors: These companies focus on producing video monitors and sensors to monitor pets and babies through the comfort of a smartphone. Most startups in this space, such as Y Combinator alumni Lully and Petcube, are young and still in their early stages of funding.

Safety & Security: These companies utilize the internet and home automation technologies to help protect you and your home with monitors, internet-enabled locks, smart smoke detectors, and more. This is one of the larger and more well-funded categories, as companies in this space include Ring, Simplisafe, August Home, andCanary, which have all received over $40M in equity funding.